You Don’t Say

Political campaign television ads are annoying at best. Here in Los Angeles, where we have an election next week, Wendy Greuel, a member of the city council who wants to be City Controller, is running an ad that drives me crazy.

The ad presents her as a fiscal watchdog. One of her claims goes like this:

“The city gave 5.7 million dollars in loans, only now they don’t remember who they gave it to.”

Whether that claim is true or not I don’t know (although I’m skeptical since the city council would have had to approve these so-called loans). What I do know is that Ms. Greuel and her campaign staff need a refresher course in pronoun usage. It’s one thing to speak informally at a Kiwanis breakfast and flub your grammar. It’s quite another thing to script a television commercial and write in Grammar 101 flubs.

So, Ms. Greuel, here’s my campaign contribution: Hire a proofreader! A good proofer would have flagged these flubs:

Flub #1 and #2: You can’t use they (a plural pronoun) to refer to city (a singular noun). The correct pronoun to use to refer to city would be it.

Flub #3: The misuse of who, which is a subject pronoun. What’s needed here is the object pronoun whom–”they don’t remember whom….”

Better yet, here’s what you could have said:

“The City of Los Angeles can’t account for 5.7 million dollars in loans to [fill in the blank].

Point made–simply, clearly, grammatically.

A conversation about the Democratic primaries overheard in an LA restaurant:

He:      “So, who are you going to vote for? Hillary or Obama?”

She:     “Well, I don’t know who I’m actually for yet, but I think I’m leaning towards Hillary.”

Lean all you want, but use the correct object pronoun, please. If we can’t talk about race or gender during this campaign, can we at least bring up grammar?

He should have said, “Whom are you going to vote for?” And she should have replied, “I don’t know whom I’m actually for yet…”

OK, I’m making a fuss over nothing, you say. It was a casual conversation and they probably had had a glass of wine or two.

Granted. But the point is the English language has a perfectly fine object pronoun to use when the occasion arises—whom. And it’s pretty easy to figure out when to use who (subject pronoun) and whom (object pronoun).

• Who is used the same way he, she, and they are used—as a subject pronoun. In other words, if the pronoun in question is the subject of a clause or follows a linking verb, then who is the correct pronoun to use.  

• Whom is used the same way him, her, and them are used—as an object pronoun. If the pronoun in question is the object of a verb or a preposition, then whom is the correct pronoun to use.

So, back to the conversation. Try this test to figure out whether who or whom is correct—fill in the blank with he/she or her/him:

Are you going to vote for _____?

I’m actually going to vote for _____.

See what I mean? It’s not so difficult. Whom is the correct pronoun.

And I won’t even get into the sexist implications of referring to Senator Clinton as Hillary while Senator Obama is referred to by his surname.